Friends in High Places
by Whitsie
Summary: Peter Parker needs a dad not a Daddy (5 times the team thought Tony was Peter's sugar daddy and one time they realized he wasn't.)
**Disclaimer:** I don't own any Marvel related anything

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1.

Steve knows that men can be with men now. Everyone has been very insistent on making sure he knows that men and men or women and women together is completely fine, and legal, and they can get married and everything, like they all forget he grew up in Brooklyn, but its okay. It's nice to see how invested most people are in equality.

(It's funnier now that Bucky's back, and they are sat at breakfast with the other Avengers, or in a briefing with Fury and Hill and Bucky looks over at Steve with a smirk and says "Did you know its okay for two men to be together nowadays. Gee whiz, Stevie, if only we'd thought of that in the thirties.", or something along those lines, because both Bucky and Steve have only ever been each others and having illegal sex was the least of their worries while they were starving in the Depression.)

But, and this may just be Steve and his 'old-fashioned sensibilities', he is still astounded by how much people in the 21st century seem to think that some things are okay. Especially things that very much aren't.

Like Tony at a very fancy restaurant with a boy. A boy who is definitely under half Tony's age, and certainly not old enough for the wine he is drinking to be legal.

And Steve isn't sure what to think, because he's here with Bucky, and he knows his manners and knows he should always focus on his date, but he can't keep looking over at Tony and the boy he is clearly stepping out with.

Bucky reaches over to rub his hand and then further up along his forearm, groping it as he asks if he is okay, and Steve tilts his head toward Tony, knowing Bucky will look over and see why he's distracted. Bucky looks shocked for a second, same as Steve was, but then smirks and leans to the side slightly because they are sitting close enough to Tony that they can just hear the edges of their conversation.

"You really should come by..."

"...dunno. It'd be kinda weird."

"Nah, they'd..." Steve misses the end of Tony's sentence as the waiter brings them the check, and Steve has to pull out his wallet.

"I'm just so much _younger_."

And that's enough for Steve. He likes Tony, and trusts him on the team, and knows his private life is his own, but he doesn't need to hear this. He hurries Bucky out of the restaurant and entwines their fingers for the walk home, all the while considering if he needs to intervene, or bring this up with the rest of the team.

He'll talk it over with Bucky in the morning.

2.

Way before Bruce ever knew Peter Parker and Spiderman were the same person, he sees Tony dragging Spiderman behind him by the wrist, and through his open lab door hears Tony saying, "I can't believe you didn't tell me your web was synthetic. I always liked you, but I didn't know you were smart too. I makes you doubly as cool." as he pushes Spiderman into his lab, which... not even Bruce has been allowed to enter, because Tony is, to put a fine point on it, an uptight, anal-retentive bitch about keeping his workspace in order and doesn't trust anyone except the robots he built himself with his stuff.

But. It's not Bruce's business, so he goes back to his own work and is sucked back into his calculations.

3.

Natasha sprints up the stairs of the Parker home as she hears the key turn in the lock. She pauses silently at the top of the stairs long enough to hear two sets of footsteps walk into the kitchen, then makes her way to the room at the end to put a tiny camera and microphone in Peter Parker's bedroom, facing the window they have seen Spiderman going in and out of almost every night.

It's impressive what the boy does, especially as he just turned eighteen, and has running around the city as a vigilante for two years, but S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't recruit without all the information possible, so Natasha has been sent to plant a couple of bugs around the boys home.

She's about to climb out the boys window, so she can set up another camera focused on it from the building opposite when she hears a familiar squawk of outrage. She can't think of any reason for Tony Stark to be in this boys house, not when the boy is so protective of his identity, that she makes her way back to the hallway and employs a trick Clint taught her to bounce up the wall silently and hold herself near the roof, close enough to the stairs that the voices trickle up from the kitchen, where the sounds of food being made indicate what they are doing.

Natasha knows that the bugs she planted will pick up this conversation, but her curiosity is too high for her to wait until this afternoon to get the recording when she can just listen to the real thing right now.

"It's just I'm terrible at relationships, okay." That's Parker's voice, familiar due to the occasional run ins the Avenger's have had with Spiderman. "Like my last girlfriend died. After we had like the messiest breakup ever."

"I wouldn't say _ever_. I broke up with my girlfriend, who was also my CEO, who lives in the same building as me. With five other superheroes who don't know how to keep their opinions to themselves. Plus Cap's asshole boyfriend whose sole pleasure in life is to screw up mine. Like, okay I get it, you had gay sex way back when too. Sorry for assuming Cap would have attitudes anything like my asshole of a father. Wait, right, I mean, Pepper didn't die, so you've got me beat there, but you're fine, and we've both moved on from our terrible past relationships-"

Stark breaks off here because while he may be a genius, he is also emotionally inept, and honestly the sound of a sob from Parker is not at all surprising.

"No no no. Come here." Natasha hears a shuffling step across the kitchen tile, and the sound of what is presumably a hug. "It's okay. It's all okay now, remember."

Parker laughs wetly. "Yeah, Tony. It's all okay. Thanks."

And this... is not normal Tony Stark behaviour. Tony Stark avoids babies, feelings and sex without a condom like the plague, probably because all three of those things can be found in an accidental pregnancy, along with court cases and custody battles, which Stark has no desire to ever deal with, so him comforting someone is very out of character and indicates something which is very... rich man's mid-life crisis of him.

Natasha drops back to the floor and makes her way out of the house before she has to hear any of Stark's idea of 'comforting' someone.

4.

It says something about Clint's life now that he doesn't even blink when what is essentially a stripper pole goes up in a corner of the common living room. He sees it in the corner of his eyes when he goes from the lift to the kitchen, because Clint sees everything, but doesn't care enough to even make a comment.

Stark is already in the kitchen drinking coffee out of a massive mug, while Peter sits in between Bucky and Steve, all three of them devouring a massive plate of bacon and eggs, because genetically enhanced apparently includes the metabolism as well.

Clint likes Peter. He was funny, and kinda awkward and sassy as hell, and managed to work himself into the team, despite the first thing he had said, even before he took of the mask when he had turned up for dinner one night, was, "I'm here because Tony invited me and promised me good food. Not to join your team because I don't want to deal with aliens."

Peter was more likely now to turn up if the Avengers were ever fighting something in New York, and regularly fell in a window of Stark Tower after one of his fights to ask for medical care, because fast healing or not, even superheroes need stitching sometimes.

So Peter sitting in Stark's kitchen wolfing down food is not a surprise either.

What is a surprise is Peter standing up and putting his plate in the dishwasher then walking over to the pole as he strips off his shirt so he's dressed in a ridiculous pair of spandex booty shorts that only those under 25 have the ability to pull off, and immediately bends in half to put his hands on the floor, holding it for a count of ten, then flipping over into a handstand and fluidly into a back bend, with the tips of his hands only an inch away from his heels.

Now both Natasha and the thirties-boyfriends have shared their thoughts on Stark being Peter's sugar daddy. In slightly different terms, but the message was the same. But Clint had dismissed their worries. Or, not dismissed, because he _is_ a spy, and also not stupid so he doesn't dismiss anything, but figured they were confused, or misreading a situation.

So Clint does blink when Peter says, bent almost in in half, _backwards_ , when they all step out into the living room to watch him, "Tony and I have already gone through pushing my flexibility just using my body, and we pretty much hit a dead end, until we started using a wall, and my webs, and figured a bunch of things the pole would help me with."

And yeah. Clint can see where they're all coming from.

Peter stands up and stretches his arms, pulling them behind his back, and then steps up to the pole, placing one foot carefully next to it, and then pulls his other leg out and around and up until he is pressed against the pole in the splits with his torso perpendicular to his legs. He holds it for ten seconds then, puts his hands down on the ground, almost next to his feet, and that's when Clint notices the outlined square that looks to be a foot in total around the pole.

Tony notices him looking and grins. "Any time he's touching the ground, every part of him on the floor needs to be in that square. I'm thinking of buying him one of those boxes people fit into, and just making it smaller and smaller until he can't get in."

And Clint would love to reply to that except Peter just used his hands on the ground to support himself while he rotated his legs 180 degrees, leaving his opposite foot on the ground, stretched into the splits the whole time, and Clint is just a man alright, and Peter's ass is tight, and he's lean and young and working up a sweat and Clint needs to leave before he embarrasses himself.

And you know what, if Tony wants to have an uber-flexible, pole-dancing, superhero boy toy in his bed, more power to him.

5.

Bucky has long hair too, and so while Peter's isn't as long as his own, he knows that bed hair is a hassle to deal with without a comb and a lot of water, so he isn't surprised when Peter stumbles out of Tony's room attached to the common floor wearing the shirt Stark was wearing yesterday, a pair of boxers and hair that looks like he's been tossing and turning all night, or, you know, someone was running their hands through it repeatedly.

He slumps down at the kitchen table after grabbing a cup of coffee, and pouts at it like the teenager he is.

Bucky sees the rest of the team, except Stark who isn't in the room, send each other covert glances, obviously not sure whether to interfere in what ever Peter's problem might be.

So Bucky obviously speaks up."Relationship problems?"

"Hmm?" Peter looks up, clearly not having heard what he said.

"Something happened with your boyfriend?"

"Yeah." Peter pouts harder, obviously going for a glare, but too young and too tired to really pull it off. "He's being an asshole. I have this derivative of my webbing that I'm working on, that can like basically replace stitches, and that glue stuff that hospitals sometimes use, and I'm nearly done with it, except I'm trying to get the formula to be different enough so that like bad guys can't work out how to make my actual webbing not work, and I'm nearly there, but he just wants to take over the whole thing, because 'that's my area of work Peter, honestly'" Bucky almost laughs at the end of Peter's little rant because his imitation of Stark's voice is so off, but manages to compose himself.

Before he has a chance to reply though, Banner speaks up. "But Tony's a mechanic, or an engineer, or even a physicist. Biology and chemistry are not his area of work."

Peter looks up from his coffee, that he had gone back to glaring at during his rant, with a confused expression. "What? What does Tony have to do with anything?"

"Your boyfriend is the problem, right?" Banner asks.

"Yeah, Harry's being a total dick."

+1

And of course this is when Tony walks in, because Peter may not be on Tony's level, but he is still a genius and he can connect the dots to see that Bruce, and the rest of the Avengers thought he was _dating_ Tony, which is ridiculous, and so so _so_ weird.

"Harry _is_ a complete asshole."

"Tony, you're just saying that because he's your competitor." Peter sighs

"Oscorp does none of the same things Stark Industries does, we're barely even in the same market. And SI is double it's size anyway."

"One and half times, not double." Peter snarks back, used to this conversation. "Anyway, I can call Harry a dick 'cause he's my boyfriend. You've never even met him."

Tony rolls his eyes, but Peter can see the smile around his lips. "Alright kid, keep your hair on."

"Okay. Nope. What the hell."

"Eloquent as always, Barton. What's your problem." But Peter is looking at Tony, and can see the side of his face and that fucker _knew_ that his whole team thought that Peter was Tony's... sugar baby or something, and didn't tell him.

" _My_ problem? My _problem_?" Clint splutters. "My problem is that Peter is dating _Harry Osborn_ , and you we're totally happy to let us all think he was your boy toy or something." And yeah sometimes Peter forgets that Clint definitely deserves his place on a superhero team despite being 100% human. "That's just rude." He huffs, clearly more offended at not being in on the joke than anything else.

He can see the comprehension dawn, as they all realise they've been played, except for Bucky who has a shit-eating grin on his face as he nudges Steve to get his attention.

"Hey, hey Stevie. Did you know that two men could be together now. Like _biblically_. 'Cause I sure didn't."

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 **AN:** Crossposting from Ao3 because I got sick of people asking me to. Leave a review on your way out. xx


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